Childbearing Losses
Unfortunately, loss is all too often an outcome of childbearing. Losses such as miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion can be heartbreaking. Other kinds of losses including giving a child up for adoption, having a baby in the NICU, loss of the hoped for birth experience, or having a baby with a disability are often ignored or minimized as losses that need to be grieved. In all cases, parents frequently experience anger, sadness, guilt, and grief.
Recovery includes creating time and space to grieve, attending to your physical needs, getting support for your feelings, letting go of pain and suffering, and reconnecting with your spirituality.
Not all people who are grieving need therapy, but therapy can be helpful when you have few other supports in your life, or friends and family members aren’t able to support you in a way that feels meaningful to you. Therapy can also be helpful if grief becomes complicated by other stressful events in your life, you feel stuck in a particular stage of grief, or this current loss is complicated by other past losses.
Men and women grieve very differently and couples sometimes need help through this difficult time so that it doesn’t create disharmony in their relationship.